Entrepreneur? Why You Should Launch in Tennessee
State offers numerous accelerators and incubators to help you succeed.
Creative people, rejoice. Entrepreneurs in Tennessee enjoy many accelerators and incubators that can help them get their innovative ideas and businesses launched and growing.
Help can come in areas such as capital, marketing strategies, access to top college professors and other experts, connections to big-name investors and much more.
Did You Know?
Incubators help entrepreneurs enhance business ideas and build their company from the ground up. Accelerators provide education, resources and mentorship to early-stage companies that already have a minimum product.
One of the many excellent startup helpers in Tennessee is Bunker Labs in Nashville, which specializes in aiding military veteran entrepreneurs and their spouses. Bunker Labs officials say they also take pride in assisting as many service-disabled veterans as they can.
In Memphis, AgLaunch is an accelerator that invests in agricultural startup companies and has a goal of launching about 50 new ventures each year.
AgLaunch focuses on innovative entrepreneurs dealing with a broad range of areas such as precision agriculture, robotics and automation, biologic-based pest control, specialty crops, reduction of food waste and spray drift control.
A Smorgasbord of Resources in Tennessee
The Kitchen Incubator of Chattanooga, or KIC, provides 10,000 square feet of food-centric startup space to assist entrepreneurs of color. KIC can help caterers and bakers in search of a commercial kitchen provide overnight storage areas for food truck owners, help entrepreneurs obtain their business license and much more.
Knoxville Entrepreneur Center is a business accelerator in the city’s downtown district that helps a wide range of tech startups, makers and innovators. Also in K-town is 100Knoxville, which has a goal of growing local Black-owned businesses by $10 million over the next five years.
Education, Careers & Opportunity
These 4 Entrepreneurs Excel in Tennessee (and You Can, Too!)
Find out why the Volunteer State is a magnet for startups.
In addition, the Volunteer State has several incubators and accelerators dedicated to specific ideas and startups.
For example, ZeroTo510 in Memphis helps entrepreneurs with ideas for medical devices, and Powered Health in Nashville assists startups that want to provide software solutions over the entire scope of health care.
And it’s not just Nashville that is heavily invested in the music industry. For instance, Start MMT is based in Memphis and dedicated to entrepreneurs with creative talent and a desire to advance music industry technology. The goal of Start MMT is to help entrepreneurs move their raw idea to product launch in just 100 days.
Get to Know Tennessee
Want to learn more about living and working in Tennessee? Check out the latest edition of Livability’s Tennessee Economic Development Guide.
